We of the Never-Never eBook

The next day passed branding the cattle, and the following
as we arrived within sight of the homestead, Dan was
congratulating the Maluka on the “missus being
without a house,” and then he suddenly interrupted
himself “Well, I’m blest!” he said.
“If we didn’t forget all about bangtailing
that mob for her mattress.”

We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts,
with the warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me
indifferent to mattresses, and hearing that Dan became
most hopeful of “getting her properly educated”
yet.

Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed
the Maluka a letter containing a request for a small
mob of bullocks within three weeks.

“Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,”,
Dan said, also waxing enthusiastic, while the South-folk
remained convinced that life out-bush is stagnation.

CHAPTER XIX

Dan and the Quiet Stockman went out to the north-west
immediately, to “clean up there” before
getting the bullocks together; but the Maluka, settling
down to arrears of bookkeeping, with the Dandy at his
right hand, Cheon once more took the missus under
his wing feeding her up and scorning her gardening
efforts.

“The idea of a white woman thinking she could
grow water-melons,” he scoffed, when I planted
seeds, having decided on a carpet of luxuriant green
to fill up the garden beds until the shrubs grew.
The Maluka advised “waiting,” and the
seeds coming up within a few days, Cheon, after expressing
surprise, prophesied an early death or a fruitless
life.

Billy Muck, however, took a practical interest in
the water-melons, and to incite him to water them
in our absence, he was made a shareholder in the venture.
As a natural result, the Staff, the Rejected, and the
Shadows immediately applied for shares—­pointing
out that they too carried water to the plants—­and
the water-melon beds became the property of a Working
Liability Company with the missus as Chairman of Directors.

The shadows were as numerous as ever, the rejected
on the increase, but the staff was, fortunately, reduced
to three for the time being; or, rather, reduced to
two, and increased again to three: Judy had been
called “bush” on business, and the Macs
having got out in good time.

Bertie’s Nellie and Biddie had been obliged
to resign and go with the waggons, under protest,
of course, leaving Rosy and Jimmy’s Nellie augmented
by one of the most persistent of all the shadows—­a
tiny child lubra, Bett-Bett.

Most of us still considered Bett-Bett one of the shadows
but she persisted that she was the mainstay of the
staff. “Me all day dust ’im paper,
me round ’im up goat” she would say.
“Me sit down all right”.